Public health and individual health care are increasingly oriented towards managing risks. This ‘surveillance medicine’ does not target present illnesses but aims to prevent possible future conditions, greatly expanding the number of people implicated in medical interventions. In this paper, I interrogate the everyday experience of being at risk of illness. First, I suggest that we lack a comprehensive account of this experience, because current ways to characterise this phenomenon tend to equate risk with (chronic) illness and patient status. I then report a case study designed to avoid this starting point. I conducted interviews with laypersons with varying levels of elevated cholesterol, a common risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, who were recruited from a consumer panel in Finland in 2015. I found three elements that structure the health risk experience: the intangible nature of risk, the probabilistic character of risk estimates, and the ambivalent status of risk in terms of health and illness. While these findings overlap with previous literature in many ways, detaching health risk from illness foregrounds health management instead of patient behaviour. These findings call for caution in approaching health risk uncritically through illness categories or patient status, and I invite researchers to critically examine such elements in other cases and contexts.

公共卫生和个人医疗保健越来越注重风险管理。这种“监视医学”并不针对当前的疾病，而是旨在预防未来可能出现的情况，从而大大增加了参与医疗干预的人数。在这篇论文中，我询问了处于患病风险中的日常经历。首先，我建议我们缺乏对这种经历的全面描述，因为目前描述这种现象的方法倾向于将风险与（慢性）疾病和患者状态等同起来。然后，我报告了一个旨在避免这一起点的案例研究。我对 2015 年从芬兰的一个消费者小组中招募的胆固醇水平升高（心血管疾病的常见危险因素）的非专业人士进行了采访。我发现了构成健康风险体验的三个要素：风险的无形本质、风险估计的概率特征以及风险在健康和疾病方面的矛盾状态。虽然这些发现在许多方面与以前的文献重叠，但将健康风险与疾病分开是健康管理而不是患者行为的前景。这些发现要求在通过疾病类别或患者状态不加批判地处理健康风险时要谨慎，我邀请研究人员在其他情况和背景下批判性地检查这些因素。将健康风险从疾病中分离出来是健康管理而不是患者行为的前景。这些发现要求在通过疾病类别或患者状态不加批判地处理健康风险时要谨慎，我邀请研究人员在其他情况和背景下批判性地检查这些因素。将健康风险从疾病中分离出来是健康管理而不是患者行为的前景。这些发现要求在通过疾病类别或患者状态不加批判地处理健康风险时要谨慎，我邀请研究人员在其他情况和背景下批判性地检查这些因素。